Once Upon a Time in Japan: On the way to Muragame
Got up early and we cleaned and picked up the room. Tony said that the convenience store down the street had an ATM set up, so I was like, sweet! I booked over there and checked it out. It didnt work. CURSES!
The bus from Fukui to Tadotsu, well, to Muragame...the city next door, was supposed to leave at 10AM. I was in charge of checking out of our room. I went down there and went to pay the bill for the dinners. There was no bill/chit in the little box and the guys were like, OK, thank you. I was like, fellas, we had 3 dinners and 2 beers, i need to pay for it, where is the bill. They looked surprised and nervous and set for searching for it for like 10 minutes. They came back and said, "Oh, its ok. No need to worry." I was like, whatever, and boarded my bus.
10AM rolled around. We sat there. At about 1030am, Dan, the brit I was sitting next too was fed up and went to find out the reason for our problem. Apparently, a couple people skipped out on paying their food bill and didnt fully check out yet. I was like, MF! I went to the front desk and the same guys were holding it and when the saw me, they got embarrassed. I paid the bill and got back on the bus. Then about 15 minutes later we were still sitting there and Dan went to check again. There was still an outstanding check. So we were gonna take a collection to pay it off when the travel agent with us just paid it. We finally left in the buses at 11am.
We were all happy to get going on the 6-7 hour bus ride. Then we stopped at the bottom of the hill at the Lawson's Convenience Store. AIYA! Everyone on the bus was like, WTF!?!? Some of the Swedes were got the driver to stop so they could get some water since they were hung over. Swedes. One of the brits on our bus got off and went to tell them off and to hurry up.
Finally we were off.
We stopped off at about 4 service centers. After the first hour, then after the second hour, then 20 minutes after we left the last center, and then one more time when we were about 1.5 hours from our destination. Jeez.
The ride itself wasn't too bad. I slept a little. Had some nice conversations with Dan and Kavita. Both brits sitting on either side of me....I am surrounded by redcoats!
We got to our destination, Muragame at about 7pm. Its the next town over from Tadotsu and Hombu. About two train stops away. The town was quite big. I checked in. Tony had already been there because he traveled by train on his own and had gotten there much earlier. I had to borrow money from Tony because the hotel people were only accepting cash because of a special deal with the SK Headquarters. I hope that Post Office ATM works tomorrow. The room is small, but not that bad. I walked around a bit with Tony and David searching for a place for some dinner. We ended up in the red light district but left it. Gary wasn't with us because the branchmasters had a special meeting. I bought a fone card and called Yumi. I then hung out with Tony and David. Tony had his computer set up onto the internet. I got to email people n junk.
Goodnite.